


Bookmarks, Subscribing and Fandom Series

by Moon6Shadow



Series: Fandom Meta [2]
Category: Fandom - Fandom, Meta - Fandom, fandom meta
Genre: Authors, Don't copy to another site, Gen, Inspired By Tumblr, Readers - Freeform, Reading Lurkers - Freeform, Reposting is only allowed for historic preservation with credit; not for personal or financial gain., repost from tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-12-14 04:46:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21009962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moon6Shadow/pseuds/Moon6Shadow
Summary: Sometimes oversubscribing is way too easy and not a good thing for the reader,orthe author, and tips to help avoid it or do instead.Authors: Part 2: Why fandom series may be way more appealing for readers to bookmark/subscribe to then author alerts and if you feel like making them that would beamazing. <3Readers:Part 1: Basics, how to avoid subscriptions getting out of control, preferably before you reach that point.Part 2: Why author alerts should be used sparingly.Part 3: ‘Bookmark Subscriptions’ without emails.Or all the above if you’re curious. :)





	Bookmarks, Subscribing and Fandom Series

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Engagement is still valuable](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/526652) by Anonymous, ao3commentoftheday, ledbythreads, heavybreathingcatt. 

1)

“You can subscribe to individual stories or to everything an author posts” - [ao3commentoftheday](https://www.tumblr.com/edit/188312876066)

Just a heads up to readers, this can get out of control very quickly. Spend a few years (or even a few weeks or months really) hitting subscribe and not getting rid of, or rarely getting rid of, subscriptions will likely result in an email address buried under AO3 alerts. Which you can do but you might want to give yourself a fanfic ‘spam’ account or just abandon your old account and make yourself a new one like I did once I realised I actually needed to have an email address I could use that wasn’t literally buried in fanfic updates. XD

Also makes it hard to actually find the story alerts you actually want (or you just get a habit of using search terms to find literally anything in your inbox) so if you want to subscribe to things I recommend sticking to the stories and authors you plan on _actively_ following or the stories that have been incomplete for ages (months, years, decade) but if the author ever comes back _you want to know about it._

(Or you can just randomly remember to manually search for an update every few months or year, years… or whatever, that works to. #Yes I’ve done this. Although really for the ‘will likely never be finished stories’ it’s more along the lines of ‘No update? Time to reread!/randomly reread bits and pieces all over the place and just keep going…)

How do you subscribe to everything else without flooding your email?

Bookmarks can be sorted by date updated.

Bookmark = no email.

Date updated search = notification

Take a second to let that sink in.

And for the cherry on top:

Bookmark also = ability to search for _whatever_ fandom, story type etc. updates your heart desires right now.

Well okay it’s not perfect because the heart is fickle and chapter/series updates to you’re preferred story type aren’t guaranteed but still, the ability to search for updates via _multiple_ filters!!! and no (okay less) email alerts. Updates when I want them but not when, or _where_, I don’t want them. Perfection. <3

2)

So I’ll give tips for ‘bookmark subscriptions’ in a minute but first a quick side note before I potentially lose the authors interest. To those authors who make fandom series or group similar stories together in series that is utterly amazing and if you could keep doing that, or do that, that would be _awesome_.

The thing that is really offputting about author alerts notifications is that it sends you everything, _literally everything_ the author posts. So if the author and readers interests only cross paths in one specific fandom or their interests diverge over the years but there is that slim slither of hope the author will post in an old fandom, or you just worry about upsetting authors by unsubscribing. Well…. you’re going to get a lot of random updates from fandoms you have no clue even existed filling up your inbox.

Fandom, or similar story type, series where readers can bookmark or subscribe to all the stuff they do want to see but get none of the stuff they don’t want to see? They are _absolutely amazing_. Even if I ‘only bookmark’ instead of subscribing. I can still see if you have updated something I actually want to read now, when checking my bookmarks, and it’s _awesome_.

If I’m finding updates via bookmarks instead of notes 1) I’m going to be slower noticing authors updated unless I’m checking it all the time 2) _But_ I’m still more likely to actually notice authors updated rather then it being lost under an insane mountain of author alerts about fandoms I have no clue about. #information overload

Basically unless readers are completely on top of which authors they are subscribed to, it can easily become an email alert nightmare if the readers subscribe to lots of people. Subscribe to people for a few years and the numbers add up extremely fast, meanwhile people’s interests often change or they post in multiple fandoms etc.

So fandom series or similar stories series? Are _extremely useful _for streamlining the flood of information/email alerts, down to just that one thing people want to read.

(Btw, yes I tried email filters, -.- I either did it wrong or I maxed them out and broke them. XD Quick tip: Forget blocking what you don’t want, AO3 has way too many fandoms to ever get anywhere that way. If you want a chance of getting anywhere look at all the fandoms and authors you do want to hear from and block literally everything else and you might have a chance of getting somewhere. (Although make sure you left a gap for kudos, comments, replies to comments and AO3 staff alerts to come through. If you want to get those alerts as well.)

3)

Now back to ‘bookmark subscribing’ tips.

So, for everything but your absolute top favourites that you plan on _actively_ following I recommend bookmarking, but not subscribing, to everything you want to keep an eye on and then sort your bookmarks by ‘date updated’. It means you’ll get way less emails and you can use all. the. filters. while you are doing so. In the mood for x fandom and x pairing or some hurt/comfort? You can filter that! Of course you’ll probably need a bunch of relevant bookmarks first XD and it’s never going to be 100% guaranteed that authors have updated but once you get going it can be really useful. <3 (Plus there is also rereading. <3)

You can also bookmark literally everything if there have been way too many times you hunted down that _one_ _story_. Of course once you have a hundred or so bookmarks in the same relationship, character etc. section you now have to search through all those even if it’s still a much smaller search area then all of AO3 (and FFN and LJ… etc. Speaking of you can also bookmark things that _aren’t_ on AO3. <3)

Also over time you can work out a system where you use bookmark tags, keywords in bookmark notes, recs and perhaps even a specialised bookmark [semi-actively keeping an eye on but not on my email alerts list] tag to help you find things.

Speaking of bookmarking notes! Awesome way to note where you are up to eg. Ch. 3 or Part 3 (for a series) Also it means when sorting stories/series by ‘date updated’ you can quickly glance at what chapter/part you are up to and what chapter/part the story/series is up to. So you know if there is anything new there. First page or so of ‘date updated’ full of new bookmarks and things you just read? Skip back a few pages. You can also skip to very end to the oldest updated stories and work from there.

Filtering via bookmarks notes and tags is awesome but please note you can _only_ exclude bookmarks tags. So if there is anything you want to exclude from a search like stories you have ‘Finished Reading’ you need to make that a tag rather then something you include in your notes. I also like to tag Oneshots, or Twoshots, to make them easier to find or exclude from searches.

Personally I also include the chapter I finished reading the story on in my notes. You don’t need to include the chapters bit I just to for those times when the story is marked as finished aaand then it gets updated. So I don’t get confused/ensure I notice something new is there. Although now I can exclude ‘finished reading’ stories from my ‘chapter alert updates’ I may need to watch that. (Granted the only reason I even tend to find these, thanks to my overflowing emails, is due to going back to the story to reread or randomly stumbling across it. So at the end of the day it may not really change things for me personally.)

Further notes in bookmarks. One of those people who likes to put a million bookmarks in books for bits to reread or to find things again? Now you can! I’ll typically put the chapter I’m up to at the top, any ‘public’ notes below that if I want to tell other potential readers anything and then below that I’ll put ‘potential spoilers, notes’ and then go crazy with the ‘memory jogger bookmarks’. I’ll typically try to stick to memory joggers eg. ‘Ch.3 [keyword/s], end of chapter’ to try and avoid too many spoilers if anyone happens to read that part of the bookmark while also trying to make it useful to me. The ‘end of chapter’ bit is primarily for when I just want to bookmark a specific scene in the chapter rather then the whole chapter.

Authors can read bookmarks so please keep that in mind and be mindful of wording and avoid ratings. Eg. 5/10 (overall rating). If you want to add other ratings eg. How much sex or romance was in the story etc. you’d likely need to clarify the ratings are about ‘how much’ was in the story rather then the actual quality of the writing itself. #sometimes low ratings might actually be a good thing depending on the audience and what they’re measuring but you’ll likely want to somehow clarify that to the author given they can see them. :)

If you think bookmarks are interesting but you don’t like the idea of an online footprint or people seeing (and judging) what you read, you’re using the same user name somewhere else or just you know, ‘real life’ is a thing you are worried about. Private bookmarks all the way. Although just a heads up, you can’t make multiple bookmarks private at once so if you every feel the need to come back and make them private years down the track you’ll need to do it one at a time and it’s going to take you _awhile_. But private bookmarks are always an option if you ever feel the need.

Additional notes: Authors can rearrange series, they can also rearrange chapters although I’ve only really seen it happen once in regards to (story) chapters. Not sure about meta etc. but story wise people typically leave things sorted via date updated unless they have a legit reason to do otherwise eg. Story timeline reasons for a story series made up of oneshots that was written out of order. So authors rearranging is not something I’ve really run into issues with but it is good to make a mental note that authors can do that. So if your ‘I’m up to part 3’ numbering seems off you can just double check to see if any rearrangement has happened. If something does get shifted you can also add quick memory jogger note to the bookmark if you feel the need.

If you read parts of a series or fandom advice/reference ‘story’ out of order you can also note which parts you have, or haven’t, read in the bookmark notes.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you everyone for reading!! <3
> 
> #Fandom for Fun, so not looking for critics but pretty much all polite feedback including Whisper and Murmur comments are totally welcome. If you've left feedback in the form of kudos, bookmarks and/or comments I likely won't see feedback immediately, but I will see it eventually so thank you!! 
> 
> Open series to see my detailed [LLF Comment Project](https://longlivefeedback.tumblr.com/llfcommentproject) statement or see [Poetry and Short Stories](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1007304) series notes for my Blanket Permission Statement but basically, as long as you credit, yes you can.


End file.
